The Diamond Tower is crowning centerpiece of India's largest greenfield megaproject, the Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT) The 87-floor Diamond Tower will be India's largest commercial tower and is the largest announced tower in the GIFT skyline.

------==--=--==-------

Before I go on about the Diamond Tower, its necessary to give some background on the GIFT project itself:

Located at Gandhinagar, the capital city of the über-industrial Indian state of Gujarat, and nearby the state's commercial capital of Ahmedabad, the Gujarat International Finance Tec-City will be one of the world's largest and most modern financial hubs.

From its already lofty original development goals, GIFT has since grown manifold to literally an entire city's central business district that will be larger than Paris's La Defense, Tokyo's Shinjuku, London's Dockyards and Shanghai's Pudong financial districts. It will house over a million people with millions more commuting there daily.

Well placed between the political and commercial capitals of Gujarat of Gandhinagar and Ahmedabad respectively, GIFT is a public-private partnership basically designed to kick Mumbai in the FDI balls and establish itself as a world player. It is India's first major supertall Central Business District project that is designed to be the focal point of both the world's and India's booming financial services market by providing companies with all those things Mumbai is still developing: comprehensive infrastructure, power, verticalized office space, and a well designed, planned and expandable urban form. Its strong proximity and infrastructure connectivity with Mumbai ensures that mutually beneficial development occurs between the two metros.

^ An overhead view of the new GIFT CBD. Only half the planned buildings are shown in the above rendering.

The scale of GIFT is singularly massive, unparalleled in the world except a handfull of Dubai megaprojects, none of those which can hold a candle to GIFT's goals of economic sustainability, integration and scalability.

Gujarat International Finance Tec-City will have 312 tall buildings — the tallest being the signature Diamond Tower with 87 floors; another 40 buildings with more than 50 floors and many more with 24 plus floors of height. The entire project is not only fully approved but already completely sold out due to insane demand. Construction will begin later this year.

OK, now that that's out of the way, here's the lowdown on Diamond Tower:

^ Diamond Tower seen from the view corridor over one of GIFT's many greenbelts

Designed by ECADI architects, the master planners of many of Shanghai's newest projects, Diamond Tower was designed as the centerpiece signature tower that will cap the new GIFT CBD skyline. The tower is called "The Diamond Tower" to mark Gujarat state's eminence as the diamond capital of the world. It takes its design cues from the cut facets of a traditional Indian-cut diamond and is a tip of the hat to the state's diamond industry, which had initially fueled much of Gujarat's industrialization and still remains a huge economic stimulus to the state.

^ A closeup of the Diamond Tower's diamond-like crown

The Diamond Tower is designed to convey both the brightness and shape of the diamond. The various cuts and facets in the tower's shape are designed to reflect and refract the light on the tower similar to a cut diamond, helping it achieve its goal of being one of the world's brightest and most eye-catching towers when it catches the light of the sun.

It is the only tower located on block (or in GIFT development parlance "Package", in reference to each site being a separate instance of public-private development partnerships) "Package D", the only tower package on Fortune Island, which also will have a huge waterfront public green space as well as a museum and convention center. The tower will be accessible by foot by a bridge spanning the river as well as the gamut of GIFT's public transport system.

^ The Diamond Tower and Fortune Island. Seen across the river are the Gateway Towers and Crystal Towers.

The tower actually went through a major design change from its initial proposal.

^ The original, shard-like design of the Diamond Tower

Initially, the tower was far more shard-like and sculpture-esque in its form, and at 80 floors rose significantly higher than the surrounding skyline:

^ The location of the old design Diamond Tower to the old GIFT city plan

^ More views of the old design of the Diamond Tower

However, after the office space of the original GIFT master plan completely sold out less than a week after its opening it was realized that even this huge project severely underestimated the demand for high-quality commercial development in Gujarat. Thus, all the buildings went through a major redesign, scaled upward in both mass and in height -- the signature Diamond Tower being no exception.

^ The new design of the Diamond Tower framed by the new Gateway Towers

After sifting through tens of proposals by ECADI, the private-public development consortium finally chose the new design of the Diamond Tower. The new tower is significantly taller, with 87 floors and a 400 meter height (possibly higher if one counts the crown as a spire.) The impression the tower gives is that of a rock-solid jewel rising over a much more aggressive and massive skyline, rather than the delicate crystal shard complementing an equally visually delicate skyline of the older design plan.

^ The Diamond Tower, Gateway Towers and Crystal Towers

The tower has been completely approved by all governing and oversight bodies and will be constructed in the first phase of the project. Construction is expected to begin later this year, but may be put on hold if more redesigns/upscaling of the project is in the offing.

Cheers,
Jai

PS: Thanks to the Indian Skyscraper Blog and the many SSC India members for help with the writeup and all the research!

well i dont know if it is too early to start a thread for individual buildings yet. i mean god forbids if this project is proved to be hot air then my heart will break only once if there was a single thread.
should we wait for the ground breaking first?

__________________

To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Regardless of whether it breaks ground or not (though its chances of not breaking ground is looking pretty slim), the proposal is a valid one and apparently approved. Hence a thread should be made on its architectural merit alone, and if this project does get cancelled, than that also should be reported in this thread.

and thats why i said lets place bets
how about this, if the "diamond tower" gets built as is by 2010 and by "as is" i mean something similar to shown in the render and the height i will paypal the three of you 50$. if for any reason it doesnt go to that height or differs in shape significantly for "safety" reasons you guys paypal me 50$. deal?

yep
the only thing that tops the over the top ugliness of the tower is its astonishing impracticality.
you cannot have glass panels leaning outwards in such a tall building. its never been attempted before. heck the sleek glass hancock tower in boston had 200 kilo glass panels falling on to the streets a month after they were installed and they were not even leaning outwards. doesnt matter though because it wont be built.

unless they are not building the previous design because it is not "Possible" to build then you owe us 50 man...
i posted tons of "impractical" towers renders to prove our side ... remember?

__________________

To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Are you kidding? So the tower actually gets taller and more massive and Mr. Never-Will-Be-Built is claiming victory?

I guess its different, I wouldn't consider it a major change of shape and it's still the same idea of a Diamond.

By the way Señor Greedy, we both agreed that any payment of cash will be to a charity, not to each other. Since its charity, I'm not going to be the one to argue schematics. Hell since you were going to loose, my plan was to match your payment to the charity anyway. You are, and I still will, btw.

But I don't agree that you've somehow 'won', but we'll let the great arbitrator of the Masses decide on who one this bet, buddy.

If there's something worse than greed, its presumptuous greed. Though I guess it was naive of me to think those two don't go hand-in-hand...

According to the Boston Globe, MIT built a scale model of the entire Back Bay in its Wright Brothers Wind Tunnel to identify the problem. The exact cause of the malfunction was never revealed due to a legal settlement and gag order. Most now diagnose the problem as a combination of the double-paned glass construction method, and the pressure differentials between the inside and outside air.

Are you kidding? So the tower actually gets taller and more massive and Mr. Never-Will-Be-Built is claiming victory?

I guess its different, I wouldn't consider it a major change of shape and it's still the same idea of a Diamond.

By the way Señor Greedy, we both agreed that any payment of cash will be to a charity, not to each other. Since its charity, I'm not going to be the one to argue schematics. Hell since you were going to loose, my plan was to match your payment to the charity anyway. You are, and I still will, btw.

But I don't agree that you've somehow 'won', but we'll let the great arbitrator of the Masses decide on who one this bet, buddy.

If there's something worse than greed, its presumptuous greed. Though I guess it was naive of me to think those two don't go hand-in-hand...

i dont remember agreeing to anything. re-read the thread.
besides charities are a scam anyways, a perfect cover for money laundering operations. if anyone in the world needs charity its me.

I know it must be hard to be so much a jag, so much of the time, but if you're going to bitch and moan, at least give us the charity of researched bitching and moaning.

^ From the same thread.

Now I'm no lawyer, though I play one on the internet, but I do believe that this handshake is considered a 'meeting of the minds', though I think that term is also being quite charitable in this case.

PS: Is it 2010 already?!

if you read that exchange i did ask you to remind me.
thanks for that. now please please contribute my winnings to the nearest salvation army. and the rest of you folks who convienently decided to ignore this thread tsk maitreyasequeria tsk also do the same.

Quote:

PS: Is it 2010 already?!

does it matter?
only around a year and a half left. even the ever optimistic you cannot seriously believe that 87 floors of glass and concrete are gonna be built in that time you?

In all fairness, I always thought the previous diamond tower was too unrealistic and shoddy. If anything it could have been a rendering for what was to come. The new tower looks more like it.

I wonder if the top of the tower could actually technically sparkle like a diamond if the sun shone on it from some particular angle? I am hoping someone more adept with the physics to shine some light on this.

I've just finished watching Singh is King & I am in a very positive mindset just like sadda Happy Singh. I say keep the thread & hopefully the tower will get built aswell.

__________________"If I were to look over the whole world to find out a country most richly endowed with all the wealth, power and beauty that nature can bestow – in some part a very paradise on earth – I should point to India."

"There is no book in the world that is so thrilling, stirring and inspiring as the Upanishads." (‘Sacred Books of the East’)

Gujarat will have India’s tallest building, a diamond tower in proposed GIFT city near Ahmedabad/Gandhinagar highway. Apart from offices, this 87 floor and over 400 metre high building will also house a museum and a convention centre on the ground floor and inside the basement level.

As of now, proposed GIFT city’s land leveling work is going on. Soon GIFT city will start constructing a temporary housing facility for some 40000+ workers. The Diamond tower would be constructed within five years as per the estimate of GIFT officials.

The GIFT project is coming up on Sabarmati river bank at the opposite side of Koba which falls on Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar highway. Video above shows a model of Diamond tower showcased at the Vibrant Gujarat Global Investors’ Summit, 2009.